Monthly Archives: October 2007

It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows a 3 Drunken Celt, that John Glaser is considered a friend of the group. Raz, Fergus, and Seamus all met John for the first time at the Whiskies of the World in 2006, where he had presented a tasting class surrounding his blends. The next year, we enjoyed his Whisky Pairing dinner the night before the Whiskies of the World expo where he masterfully paired a different dram for each of the 5 courses served including both his newly released “Oak Cross” and “Flaming Heart” blends.

For this coming year’s WoW expo, Seamus has already purchased his ticket for John’s class on blending your own whiskies and highly recommends you do the same since it is sure to sell out quickly.

As you will read in the Wired Magazine article referenced below, John has a distinct knack for blending, and has shaken up the world of whiskies a bit with his revolutionary take on some long standing whisky traditions, sometimes coming face to face with legal ramifications resulting in a discontinued product. Ah, Spice Tree, we barely knew ye (this was actually the first taste the 3DC had of John’s work, which had been surreptitiously hand-carried across the pond in a blue water jug having been filled directly from the cask only a day prior).

If you haven’t yet decided whether or not to attend the Whiskies of the World expo in San Francisco on March 28th, 2008, use this Wired Magazine article to help convince you, if only to meet John in person. You will immediately find John to be both personable and approachable, but more importantly knowledgeable about whiskies to a degree that outshines most other whisky connoisseurs around the globe.

I knew there was a reason I was drawn to the Pacific North West. In the latest issue of Food & Wine magazine, I ran across an article highlighting “America’s Best New Whiskeys” which, to my surprise, focused entirely on four Portland area distilleries. The full article can be found here: Food & Wine America’s Best New Whiskeys(and don’t forget to check out the side-bar for the contact info for the distilleries: Food & Wine Oregon’s Best Places to Buy Local Spirits )

Unfortunately, only two of the four are at a point where they are selling finished products. The other two are still (get it, STILL, ah, I kill me) working and waiting for their respective whiskies to be completed before putting them on the market. In either case I am dying to go visit the distilleries and hopefully get a taste of their various products. Rest assure when this happens there WILL be articles posted!

Since Clear Creek Distillery looks to be holding an Open House on Thanksgiving Weekend, I think this may be a good time and excuse to get John, Mary and Colleen (who will be visiting that weekend) into the city and enjoying something entirely new: Oregon peated whiskey!

So, it looks like I have some tasting work cut out for me in the months ahead. But I’ll jump on that grenade for you all and report back with my findings. I’m a giver like that.

After a series of unfortunate events resulting in loss of some configurations and some regressions in features, we have redesigned the www.3DrunkenCelts.com website to provide an easier, more user-friendly approach to the 3DC.

We are very excited about this new iteration of the 3DC website and hope this redesign will inspire increased usage and contribution of content. We are hoping for big things this coming year and already have doubled our group size for the Whiskies of the World 2008 expo! (Which means YOU ALL should come too!) But I am getting ahead of myself here…

Easier Navigation- All posts are categorized based on parent categories of Regions, Events, News, or Miscellany with sub-categories to contain the actual information. This will allow you to quickly find all posts which contain information on what you’re looking for.

RSS Feeds– We have set up RSS feeds for both Posts and comments, you can subscribe and read our content with your favourite RSS reader. SIMPLE!

Post Comments- Unlike the previous site, as a registered user on the new site, you have unfettered access to comment on any article posted to the site. This should help encourage discussion over the information posted and get better information out there and searchable to help us all learn about whiskies!

Post Articles– Yes, if you register on the new site and request to be made an author, you can post articles too! In fact we WANT you to post articles; the only reason you need to be approved as an author is to combat potential spammers. Once set as an author, you can post short articles, long articles, reviews, news, or other bits of information as they relate to the 3DC. Raz and I can not and should not be the only ones driving the content of the site. We KNOW you all have opinions and ideas, so here’s your sounding board to get those out there! To be set as an author use the contact form on the site, or send an email to admin@3drunkencelts.com and include your username so we can easily identify it.

Rate Posts– Find a post you LOVE? Rate it at 5 stars… find one you hate, rate it at 1 star. Help us learn what you like to read about. Think the author is full of himself and just likes to read his own words? Rate it and then comment too!

PDA Access– The site has now been configured to support PDA or Mobile access. Just point your mobile browser to www.3DrunkenCelts.com and away you go! I am working on mobile posting access as well for those who wish to be authors, but this feature will be in a future iteration.

And of course, no more splash page!!! This really excites me more than you know, and more than it should.

The YahooGroup here will still be available, however we’d prefer to take some of the more pertinent and content rich discussions off of this list and make them even more publicly visible on the 3DrunkenCelts.com site. This means instead of emails, we will see a single post with multiple comments by registered users. We hope this will help build a larger community on the website and hopefully encourage more content to be posted by users other than just Raz and Seamus.

So there you have it. Come one, come all. We hope to see the site grow into a fabulous resource of opinions and discussion on whiskies of all kinds!

To take a line from Raz…
Yours in Scotch,
Seamus O’Domhnaill of Devil’s Beef Tub
Mka Jason O’Donnell